


The Funeral Procession Marches Onwards

by Celestialfeathers



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: (sorry), Child Death, Dark, Determination, Disease, Famine - Freeform, Gen, Genocide Run (almost), Grief/Mourning, I know that doesn't make much sense out of context, More magic shenanigans, Murder, Nothing is going right, People doing things for good reasons but it all makes it worse, Possible insanity?, Public Speaking, Sans Has Issues, Sans Remembers Resets, Sans-centric, Some political sneakiness of a sort, Tags will update as I can think of things to add, Unreliable Narrator, Which is Understandable, also i know dust is not the same as sand but this is also special dust and magic so it totally works, and then things go horribly horribly wrong, because I wrote his speech and therefore might not be the best judge, because again, but he might not actually be good at it, but not yet, everybody's dead, given the situation and all, i need to stop, it's just kinda weird - Freeform, king sans, not inappropriate, or in context really, post-genocide, shhhhh, sorry - Freeform, strange use of magic, things go well for five seconds, which Sans is not good at then kinda is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celestialfeathers/pseuds/Celestialfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been here before. It always ends the same, with red spilling onto the floor of the judgement hall. That is, it used to end that way. This time is different. This time is new. They've managed to spare him. </p><p>Now there's a kingdom of dust to run, and there's only so long before everything falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angel of Extinction

Here they are again. Two murderers in a long hallway, cutting sharp silhouettes against the glowing glass windows. Face to face, life and death in a staring match. They're smiling, both of them, a silent laugh when nothing and everything is funny. This is not the first time they've been here.

The kid's knife glints in the light of the judgement hall, dulled along the edge by the dust coating it. Their torn sweater, loosely knitted blue yarn with two purple stripes along the chest, hangs off them as though they were a scarecrow rather than an actual creature. Their hiking boots, too, have seen better days, the rubber sole peeling off in places. Dust swirls with every step they take.

The terrifying thing, though, is their expression.

Their eyes, brown in the shadows of the Underground, seem to glow red in the light of the judgement hall. Their gaze is focused with deadly intensity, as unwavering as a predator's. A smile hangs on their mouth as loosely as their sweater hangs on their shoulders, lips pinned up in one corner as though stuck there, turning a smirk into a snarl. White teeth, seemingly sharper than a human's should be, show through. The only thing to do with an expression like that is to match it.

This has been going on too long.

The human has already adapted to his attacks, dodging and slicing with ever increasing ferocity. They're nearing their final fight, Sans knows. A few more lines of dialogue, a sharp slice of steel through bone, and he'll wake up in his bed, Papyrus just down the hall. It's easier, in a way, than the ones where they don't fight, where Sans has to wonder if this is the time they choose not to reset, if this is the time he's stuck with. He could live with a few casualties along the way, if that's the best the human could give them. The Mettaton-shaped hell would be a bit harder, but he could handle it if Papyrus were there.

He could handle almost anything if Papyrus were with him.

The human takes a step forward, and Sans remembers that they have a charade to continue here, a sort of twisted tradition.

He's so tired of this. He's so tired.

"Let's just get to the point."

They smile at him, and for a second it almost seems genuine. He's taken aback, but attacks anyway, sending out the bones and blasters. They flip and spin around them, leaping impressively high in the air to avoid one, bending almost halfway to duck under another. It's a dance of agility and skill, but they wouldn't have had a chance to dodge if Sans were really trying. What was the point, though, in locking them both in an infinite impasse, him killing them, them restarting until someone gave up? After all, it would almost certainly be him that folded first.

More bone attacks, blue attacks, gravity changing. It was the same as it had been, as it would be. At this point, it was almost as ingrained in them as it was in him. They'd hardly been touched this round, only having eaten a Mettaton Face Steak, ripping through the meat and tearing it to shreds, sending juice running down their chin and hands, mixing with the dust on their skin.

Sans offers them mercy. They won't take it, of course. They had learned that lesson already, dropping the knife only for him to shove the bones up through their spine. The shock on their face had almost made him regret it, but he couldn't afford to live in this world, couldn't afford for this to be the final ending. He had only wanted to make them see, had only wanted them to feel the betrayal Papyrus had felt before they had turned him to dust. To expose yourself like that, to give your trust to somebody else, well. Sans would probably never be able to do that. Neither would they.

They choose to fight, as he had known they would.

It begins again, knife versus bone, determination versus destruction. They slip a little on one of the bone attacks, their blood painting the white with crimson. They stand a moment, setting their shoulders as they caught their breath, eyes murderous as they smiled at him, showing their teeth. Sans smiles back. The only thing to do with an expression like that is to match it.

They slash at him some more and he responds, until finally, finally, Sans can feel the drain in his marrow, the ache in his joints. It's almost over. It's almost time to rest. It's almost time to wake up.

He pauses his attacks, sighing silently with relief as the strain on his magic eases. The human pauses too, grin widening. They both know what this means.

"You're very determined, aren't you?" The child's grin only grows more pointed. "You'll never give up, even if there's absolutely no benefit to persevering whatsoever, if I can make that clear. No matter what, you'll just keep going. Not out of any desire for good or evil, but just because you think you can. And because you 'can', you 'have to'."

A lovely speech, to be sure. He knows they don't care. They stand silently across from him, watching. There's nothing to say. There's nothing more he can say.

Slowly, his weariness creeps up on him. It's been so long since he's truly slept, despite what everyone else had thought earlier that day. They had been alive earlier that day, hadn't they? It was strange to think, and even stranger to think that he would see them, alive, in a minute. He'd joke and play along with Papyrus' antics, and he'd make sure everyone stayed fooled. He'd live the same day, again and again, and he'd cling to the faint glimmer of hope that maybe this time the human would do the right thing. This was what his life had become.

His eyes slip closed.

 

* * *

 

  
He wakes up to someone prodding his shoulder. He almost tells Papyrus to let him sleep, but that isn't the way this morning goes. Papyrus always yells at him from the kitchen, something about being a lazybones, and Sans drags himself out of bed. If it's been bad run, he'll hug his brother close, and even if it hasn't been, he still might. They'll eat some terrible spaghetti together, they'll talk about Undyne and the Royal Guard, and then they'll go to work. Sans will wait by the ruins' door, Papyrus will calibrate puzzles, and then the day will become the human's.

This is not the way this morning goes.

So instead of grumbling, he opens one eye- his left- and looks at whoever's become so insistent with the poking. It's a monster he doesn't recognize, kneeling hesitantly over him like he's going to break. The monster has white, shaggy hair like Greater and Lesser Dog did, but their features are far more catlike than the guards'. There's concern in their eyes, and with a jolt, Sans realizes that it's directed at him.

"H-hello? Sir? Are you awake?" The monster's voice is feminine, and with a quick glance at their soul, he confirms that she is indeed female. Normally that'd be automatic, but he's more drained than he could remember feeling in almost his entire life.

Sans pulls himself into a sitting position, wincing at the ache he's feeling. "Yeah, I'm up. What- what happened?"

This is new. They've never spared him during one of their genocidal rampages; they've never been able to. He never let them, and they never seemed to want to, past that one time. Stars, they must really hate him to leave him alive until the next reset.

The cat-monster's eyes water, and Sans vaguely remembers that he had asked a question.

"The human came through here. They killed almost everyone. A few of us are still alive, and we're looking for others." Her voice is hushed, like the dead are watching her. "So far, I've only found you."

"Oh." There's really not much he can say to that.

They avoid eye contact for a few seconds, staring at the ground because it's less vulnerable. After a time, the cat-monster clears her throat, which turns into a loud choking, hacking noise. Sans thumps her hard a few times on the back and the coughing subsides, her cheeks turning pinkish in embarrassment.

Another moment passes before hoarsely, she asks, "what's your name?"

"Sans." It feels like an admission somehow. "And you?"

"Cymra," she replies, pronouncing it kim-ruh. They look at each other for a second, an unspoken connection in their gazes.

"Well," Sans says, standing and extending a hand to this new monster- Cymra. "We can go look for others, if you want."

She smiles a little bit, as though maybe companionship will make this any easier. Perhaps it's the thought that if he made it, then maybe others did too. Whatever the reason, she smiles and takes his hand.

  
Together, they leave the judgement hall.

 

* * *

 

  
The Core hallways are silent but for their footsteps. Sans' slippers slap and Cymra's boots tromp, and when they walk in sync, it sounds like it's just Sans and Papyrus instead. He wants to pretend that it's more than just a fantasy, but he resists the urge. It's a dangerous path to go down, he knows, and he would never want Papyrus to see anything like this. Dust coats the floor and walls, and they both leave prints behind them. Cymra looks a little sick, but Sans is sure it was even worse where she came from. After all, New Home was one of the most heavily populated areas of the Underground.

The dust must be about a foot thick there.

The rest of Hotland is much the same as the Core, maybe a bit less dusty. Most people hadn't wanted to live in Hotland, and the ones who had had lived together, so there were clumps of dust instead of a layer. On some masochistic whim, he insists they stop by the Lab, only to find a pile of gray at Alphys' desk. Whether the human had gotten to her or she had gotten to herself was unclear.

He leaves with a heavy soul.

Waterfall is difficult to figure out in terms of casualties. The ground seems to have accepted the dust the same as dirt, washing monsters in with the earth. It's both sickening and comforting, knowing that in the end, monsters and the earth are made of the same thing. It's less quiet than Hotland, though, since the Echo Flowers just scream at them as they walk past. Neither one of them wants to be the one to quiet their pain, to talk over the dead, so they stay silent as they walk past.

Sans had forgotten the route to Temmie Village and Cymra had never known, having lived her whole life in New Home, so it takes them almost half an hour to find it. When they eventually do find it, a single lone Temmie is huddled behind the counter, yellow and blue shirt turned gray with the other Temmies. She won't leave the safety of her shop no matter how much Sans and Cymra reassure her that they're friends. With a glance, Sans and Cymra agree to come back for her later. As they leave, Cymra knocked her head into a cardboard sign that read "heLp PaY fOr TeM colleg" hanging outside the shop.

There's nobody else in Waterfall.

Sans makes them stop before they go into Snowdin. The thought of going into town makes him feel a bit dizzy, even though he had been there while the human had been actively killing. Maybe he could have stopped it all, had he tried a bit more...

No. The human would reset until they got what they wanted. No amount of monster magic could stop that. Determination was too strong. They had proved that, in the other timelines. They had gotten what they wanted, in the end, but apparently it hadn't been what they had wanted in the first place. They always came back for more. Stars, he could only hope that was the case here.

Cymra nudged him gently, bringing him back to the present. Work to be done.

With a deep breath, he puts one foot in front of the other, avoiding all thought. The hard dirt path gives way to crunching snow, and he's in Snowdin again.

It's much like he remembered, but grayer, the snow more like slush than powder. Their voices both echo off the walls, which seems to only amplify the space between their words. They pass the Librarby and Grillby's, which makes his soul clench at each. There's no sign of any of the children that loved to frequent the library, nor any of the regular patrons at Grillby's. Grillby himself was gone, and the spark of hope died in Sans' chest. Grillby had been one of Sans' closest friends as well as a competent fighter. Of all the people he had known, Grillby was the most likely to have made it. Aside from Undyne, of course, but she had melted before his very eyes.

Sans can't bear to look at his house. House, because Papyrus isn't there, so it'll never be home.

They walked down the path towards the ruins, past his sentry station, through the bridge with the too-big bars that it had taken Papyrus a week to make, and to the giant purple double doors that lay at the end of the path. Hesitantly, he knocks on the door, letting the sound of bone meeting wood ring into the inside.

"Knock knock." Cymra looks at him strangely, but he doesn't care. There's no response from the inside, and he doesn't have to go in to know they'll only find more dust. He pushes the doors open anyway, and, sure enough, dust lines the hallway. The poor lady must have tried to prevent them from leaving, though whether to protect the monsters or the human he'll never know. Based on her request for him to watch over the human, though, it was probably the latter, and his heart breaks for her even more. She hadn't deserved to end like that. Then again, none of them had; not Undyne, not Mettaton, and not Papyrus. Never Papyrus. Maybe Sans himself had deserved to meet an end like that, but maybe he deserves this more, wandering through the abandoned aftermath of a killer he hadn't stopped.

The ruins are empty, and the trail of dust leads them to a patch of buttercups. They look wilted and crushed, as though they were trampled and left to die. One look skyward shows what Sans had been expecting: A hole in the ceiling of the Underground, showing the night sky. The stars are out, little pinpricks of light that seem intangible and far away. Suddenly, their own glowing crystals seem so much more beautiful. Can you touch a star? Can you hold it in your hands? Can it help at all when it's so far away?

"This must be where the human fell through," Cymra murmurs, eyes fixed on the tear in their earthen firmament. "It must have seemed like an angel had fallen. It must have seemed like salvation. The last soul, and it had to be that one."

"Yeah." Sans keeps his eyes raised as well, watching as clouds moved in to cover the stars. "How many times does an angel have to fall before it isn't an angel anymore?"

Silence hangs in the air for a time, holding its breath for an answer that seems obvious.

"Apparently," Cymra replies, quiet, "once."

Rain begins to fall through, a light mist sprinkling the faces of the two monsters. Cymra takes one last look upwards then turns away, moving back towards the exit. Sans follows her, glancing back solemnly one more time before turning and leaving the room.


	2. King Of Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, everyone we know and love is dead, 'cept for Sans, but that doesn't mean _everyone everywhere_ is dead. Time to meet the survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell if this is formatting strangely, so let me know if it is. And hey, while you're there, maybe let me know what you think, even if you hate it. Thanks for reading, and sorry it's kinda late.

The walk back is quiet. They manage to convince the Temmie to come with them this time around, and even the usually energetic monster is solemn, withdrawn. When they reach New Home, a few people are waiting for them. Sans sincerely hopes that they're just scouts or representatives, and that there are more people that are still safely hidden. He wouldn't bet on it, though.

A burly, scaled monster steps forward, eyeing them slightly suspiciously. "Cymra? Is this everyone?"

"Yes sir." She looks close to crying, closer than she has the whole time they've been searching. The shock must be wearing off.

To Sans' surprise, the alligator-monster pulls her into a gruff hug. Cymra leans into it and begins to sob, talking lowly and quickly. Temmie is led away by one of the smaller monsters of the group that talks quietly and soothingly. That's good. Everyone is going to need a strong support if they're going to get through this.

The alligator-monster and Cymra break apart, with the cat-monster still sniffling a little. Alligator-monster looks even more defensive now, something in the hug probably bringing out his protective instincts.

"How are you alive?" Welp. He's a blunt one, isn't he?

"I don't know." Honesty is the best policy, after all. Not that it's one Sans usually follows, but in this case it's the best answer he has. It's the only answer he has when it comes to the human.

"Really?" The alligator-monster's tail swishes. "Then why is all of the Underground, aside from New Home, a Temmie, and you, dead? Everyone else, I can understand. New Home is huge and Temmie got lucky, if you can call this lucky. You're suspicious. Cymra says she found you directly in the human's path, asleep. How can you explain that?"

Cymra bumps the other monster's shoulder reprovingly, but doesn't make him take back the question. The rest of the group looks at Sans too, with varying amounts of openness. It's like the time he drank too much ketchup at Grillby's and woke up with a hangover and a disapproving brother asking questions.

Sans studies his dusty slippers, trying to figure out the best answer. There's only one thing to say, because there's no reason to really pretend anymore, no _one_ to pretnd for, almost.

"I was waiting for the human in the Hall of Judgement because I'm the Judge." The others all whisper quietly among themselves at that. The _Judge_ ? _Here_? In the aftermath of the human, out among the common monsters? It couldn't be.

"Then how could you not beat the human? Then why could you not stop them in Snowdin, or the Ruins? Why did you allow this to happen?" The alligator-monster is apparently the group spokesman, the other monsters scrunching themselves behind his larger frame for fear of the Judge's wrath. It's a fair question, one Sans asks himself sometimes.

"They were more powerful than I was." It's something he had already admitted to himself, quietly and without acknowledgment, but admitting it out loud seemed to make it more real, more concrete. As much as he hated his magic at times, as little as he had tried to use it, he had always known it would come through for him if he needed it. It had been his fallback plan, his safety net, and it hadn't been enough. "I was able to kill them, but they have a type of time magic. They reset every time I beat them. My magic would never be able to beat theirs. As for why I'm alive, I think it's revenge for killing them."

The last bit wasn't strictly true. A creature like the human didn't have such petty motivation as revenge. They had curiosity, along with the determination to back it up. It was why there was such a feeling of something alien when they looked at him, why it felt like they were taking him apart bone by bone and them piecing him back together. That was something it had taken him a while to understand, and he doesn't think the others will be able to quite get it without seeing the human for themselves.

They did seem to accept his explanation, though, exchanging horrified glances with each other. A human with that level of power- enough to defeat the Judge, to turn back time- could never be destroyed, could never be bartered with.

"Judge, what do we do?" That was one of the monsters in the back, a smooth, green ball-shaped girl. Sans winces at the title.

"Uh, just call me Sans. I dunno if I still count as Judge since the King's dead and all." He probably could have phrased that one better. "We should probably get everyone together," he pauses. "Unless this is everyone. We're going to have to figure everything out pretty quickly, but we'll do it together."

The group buzzes amongst themselves for a few seconds before collectively seeming  to agree. They look the the alligator-monster, who says "Go on ahead to the town square. Get the people out of evacuation. I'm going to talk to _the Judge_ for a little bit, so you go on ahead. I'll meet you there."

Apparently alligator-monster is a bit of an ass. The crowd dissipates, each monster going to their sector's evacuation site to bring the others to the square. They _were_ representatives, it seems, either the very brave or the very reckless. When they all have gone, the alligator-monster turns and looks him dead in the eye.

"Prove it." His tone isn't accusatory or suspicious, just flat.

"Uh, prove what?"

"That you're the Judge. I can't just take your word for it, and the others haven't either. They're just leaving it to me to find out, because they trust me."

Brutal honesty again. Alright, he can work with that. It takes a bit more effort than usual to grab the coils of pure energy in his soul, but Sans manages to call up a blaster, which looms ominously behind him. With a bit more magic, it shoots a beam of light into the ground, leaving the stones smoking and charred around the hole it seared through. The edges of the hole have crystalized, turning glassy and smooth like obsidian. It's even pretty, in a certain way. Destruction so complete it creates something new and beautiful.

Sans glances at the other monster. "Is that good enough, or should I try something else? I'm still pretty drained."

The alligator-monster shakes his head and says, "No, that's good; I've never seen magic like that before. Perhaps you still might not be the Judge, but we're going to need people of power behind us right now, and I'm willing to take what I can get."

With a wave of his hand, the blaster disappears again. "Does this mean you'll tell me your name?"

"Ligat." Ligat extends a scaled palm and Sans accepts it, shaking firmly. "And we need to talk about the future of the Underground."

"Shouldn't we wait until we're with everybody to do that?"

"No, this is a conversation for us. The people are going to need a leader, and they're going to have to be strong enough to handle all the things that will come."

Ah, so that's where this was going. "Don't worry, Ligat, I won't challenge you. You're obviously a good fit for the role."

"I think you should lead."

Welp. That's unexpected. "What?"

"Maybe I would do well as a leader, but I'm just some monster from some section of New Home. You're the Judge. That has weight around here, especially now that the King is gone." Ligat makes a small gesture at the mention of Asgore, closing his eyes briefly. "You're the closest thing we have to royalty right now, and you have the magic to back it up. You're also one of the only ones who's met the human and lived. You say you've even killed the human. It doesn't even matter if it's true as long as you can convince everyone else of it. We need a leader, and you're the best fit."

"But we're all going to talk about it right now. I was thinking we'd create a council or something." Of course, Sans would probably end up managing it from behind the scenes, like he had when Papyrus was King.

Papyrus...

"And when has a council solved anything?"

Point. "Still, I don't know. I'm a bit of a lazybones, to be honest. Ask anyone..." Sans trailed off. There wasn't anyone to ask, not anymore.

"The work isn't the important part. If you want to just be a figurehead, go for it. We just need _somebody_. Otherwise, we're going to fall apart." Ligat looks calm, as though he discusses the fate of the kingdom every day. Sans, on the other hand, can feel the pressure of the suggestion weighing in on him like a blanket of heavy snow. He already knows he can do the work, he knows he can handle the stress.  There had been other timelines where he had had the chance to be ruler, but he had never taken it. Why does he keep refusing?

Ligat glances over his shoulder as though checking the time, and Sans realizes that they have a meeting to get to. "I'll think about it."

"I'll bring up the idea during the discussion, and you can shoot it down if you want." Ligat looks at him serious, gaze firm. "But you'd better decide quickly."

With a swish of his scaled tail, Ligat strides quickly towards the square, clawed feet leaving scratched through the dust. He doesn't seem to notice. A good monster to have in a crisis, but probably not in the calm. Sans wonders, for the briefest moment, what Ligat was like before the human came down. Well, he can check after the reset.

And what about Ligat's proposal? It seems ridiculous, a bit. Sans, lazybones extraordinaire, leading a kingdom in chaos. Not that it's much of a kingdom anymore, or that Sans had ever really been as lazy as he acted in the first place. He had essentially led everyone in other timelines, from behind the scenes. It had mostly been paperwork and managing costs, both financial and moral. It had been difficult, sure, but easier than it would have been for others. Sans has always been good at rationalizing costs.

Would it be good, though, to lead for real? To take up the position of outright leadership with all its inherent risks and rewards? The power could very well go to his head. It's why he had always avoided it in the past. There had always been someone else who wanted to lead, and if they went corrupt, it wouldn't matter, eventually. If Sans goes corrupt, though, it will carry with him into the next timeline, and then all bets are off.

He can't afford to take that risk. It's better for everyone this way.

His mind made up, he snaps to the town square. It's full of monsters, maybe about three hundred in total. It's nowhere near what the population had been before, but it's better than Sans had expected. Despite the large number of people in a relatively small space, it's exceedingly quiet. There's some sobbing and shuffling of feet, but most monsters are quiet and still. They've either fallen into a shell-shocked state of unreality or they've come to terms with their situation. The surface of the situation, anyway. Loss always runs deeper than one expects it to.

All eyes turn to him as he walks up to the edge of the stone pavilion. Sans tries to smile at them, an automatic reaction, but he can't manage to lift the corners of his mouth past a neutral expression. They don't need fake reassurances anyway.

"Let's, uh, form a circle, I guess." He says it too loudly to be comfortable, but his voice barely seems to reach the other side of the square. Sans had always spoken quietly; Papyrus had always been loud enough for the both of them.

Papyrus...

Still, everyone shuffles into some semblance of an oval. There's not nearly enough room for it to be single file, so the ring is two or three monsters thick in places. No on seems to want to be the one to crowd Sans, though, so there's about a foot of space on either side of him.

Welp. This feels weird.

"So, uh, let's get started, I guess. We should try to, uh, figure out what's going to happen now." No, he should definitely never become any sort of public speaker besides a comedian. How is anyone supposed to know if they're doing well if people aren't supposed to laugh? Well, if they laugh he's probably not doing well, which is downright unfortunate. "We should probably start with our, uh, government. Does anyone have any thoughts?"

A light purple monster calls out "I thought you were going to lead us!" There's a murmur of assent among the gathered monsters.

"I, uh, don't know about that." There's a sinking feeling in his ribcage. Everyone looks so lost, so scared. He hates to be the one to do this to them. "We have to, uh, decide as a group. Everyone needs to have a say right now in what's gonna happen."

"I say we have every monster for themselves!" shouts a monster in the back row, one Sans can't see from his height. "The King's gone, Undyne's gone, the souls are gone; why not just let everyone fight it out? We're all going to die here anyway!"

The murmuring goes into a dull roar at that as though the crowd had suddenly become some mighty beast.

"We can't give up hope just yet!" responds Ligat from somewhere to Sans' left. "Things were bad right after we were trapped in the Underground, and things are bad now, but they got better before and they'll get better again."

"They killed my son!" shrieks a moth-like woman from near the front. "I felt his dust in my wings! How will it get better?"

"They killed my partner!" screeches someone else in the crowd. "He didn't even have a chance!"

Other monsters chime in as well, calling out stories of loved ones and passerby being dusted in the streets. Every cry is almost as piercing as one of the echo flowers', full of grief and fear. Some of the monsters hunch in on themselves as though trying to protect themselves from the noise, while others look almost as murderous as the human. Everything is deteriorating so fast it almost makes Sans' head spin, and the noise isn't helping his growing headache. Where was the civility of monsters?

Probably lost under the dust.

"ENOUGH!" Everyone quiets down again shockingly fast. They all look to Sans again, and it takes him a moment to realize that he had been the one who had spoken. "Look, everyone has lost something today. Whether it was friends, family, or innocence, we all lost something." Sans' voice broke, and his next sentence was almost whispered. "I lost my brother. His name is- was Papyrus. He loved spaghetti, hated puns, and wanted to be in the Royal Guard. The most important thing about him, though, is that he always tried to see the best in people. He died trying to show the human mercy, sparing them instead of fighting because he believed they could be better. They showed him the edge of their knife.

"I-I don't want us to become like the human was. I want to be like my brother. He would never want us to be like this. He'd want us to be holding our heads up against this crisis, to try and find a way to get past this. To do that, though, we have to be willing to try."

The room is dead silent. Sans gives a weak chuckle, wiping away the tears that have formed under his eyesockets despite himself. He hadn't meant to go off like that, hadn't meant to lose himself in sadness. It wasn't grief, couldn't be grief, because Papyrus is coming back with the next reset. He will.

Back to business.

"Now I know there's no such thing as a bad idea, but to the person who wanted to fight: That is a spectacularly bad idea." That draws some hesitant, quiet laughs from a few members. "We can't afford to lose anyone else right now. Everyone here is a survivor, and if we want to respect our fallen, we need to keep on surviving. They'd want us to stay strong, to get stronger. We need to organize right now to do that, though, so we need to put aside our emotions right now. We can all break down later, but right now, we need to come together and decide what we're going to do."

The square is quiet after this pronouncement, a hush falling over the people gathered. Ligat steps forward and all eyes turn to him. A sick feeling begins to coil in the bottom of Sans' ribcage. He had known this was coming, but he suddenly had the feeling that in trying to make things better for the crowd, he had just made things worse for himself.

"I think that, after that _magnificent_ speech, Sans is the obvious choice." Ligat pauses, gauging the suggestion's impact. Nobody looks surprised, and many look accepting already. "He was the Judge during Asgore's reign, and he has a significant amount of power. No, he was unable to stop the human, but with the power to rewind time, who could? He has more experience with ruling and the way a kingdom is run than the rest of us." The crowd is entranced by the picture Ligat is painting of Sans, of some powerful, competent leader. The sick feeling winds itself tighter. Ligat smiles, all curved teeth. "So, I am nominating Sans. He seems like the best choice to me, anyway. If any of you have a better suggestion, please let us know."

No one says anything. The space in Sans' ribcage has never felt so empty. He tries to come up with someone else, anyone else, but he doesn't know any of these people enough to make them King. Ligat would be the best choice, probably, but the look in his eyes makes Sans feel unnerved. He stays silent.

"Shall we vote, then?"

It's unanimous, of course. Everybody thinks Sans should lead, that Sans should be the one to fix everything, except Sans himself. The sane- or maybe insane, it's hard to tell- part of his mind says to decline the throne, to tell them that he can't do it, that he's not like they think he is. He almost does, almost opens his mouth to tell them no, but stops. Everyone's looking at him again, but it's different this time. They look, for the first time since the human, hopeful. Their eyes are wide, and some people even have weak smiles. People are still crying, but it's less soul-consuming, less wracking.

They need him.

How can he break their trust?

He nods at the crowd weakly, and gives a shaky smile. It feels like cardboard, but it makes it up past neutral.

"I'll do it."

Not the most magnanimous acceptance, to be sure, but they accept it anyway, letting out a cheer that's surprisingly loud, considering the circumstances. Ligat gives him a subtle nod from inside the circle, and a spark of angry dislike flares in his chest for a moment before fading. This probably would have happened even without Ligat's gilded speech.

"The first thing we should do is get some rest." As far as first pronouncements go, it's right up Sans' alley. "We're all tired, and this day's been _the worst_ , so let's end it. Tomorrow we can meet up here, and we can start working on moving on. You all have homes here, so you can go back to them. If someone would take in Temmie, that'd be great. All right?"

There's a general agreement and the crowd slowly disperses, dragging limbs and blinking slow-lidded eyes. Coming down from shock is draining. Ligat winks as he walks away, putting an arm around Cymra. She smiles back at Sans, a little, but there's a distance that wasn't there in the Judgement Hall. Sans smiles back anyway.

Once the last of the stragglers has gone home, Sans allows his shoulders to slump, letting out a tired sigh. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he walks towards a dark back alley, taking a shortcut back to Waterfall once he's covered in shadow. There's no real reason to hide it except force of habit, ingrained too strongly over the course of his life.

Echo Flowers come up to his knees, screaming at him as he walks past. He tries to ignore them and fails, hunching against their cries as he strides quickly towards the secluded section that Sans is pretty sure most people have forgotten. It's a pretty sparse area, with just a bench and a few Echo Flowers. These ones don't scream at him, too isolated from the carnage to hear the noise. Instead they whisper inaudibly, the way they do between conversations. Most Echo Flowers are around the more populated areas, so most people don't know that they stop talking if they aren't overwritten within a few days. Sans suspects that more people will be finding that out soon.

The bench is cool and slightly wet when he sits on it, a result of the Waterfall weather magic. Sans lets out a deep breath, letting his spine mould itself to the bench back. He's so tired. He can feel the weight of every timeline weighing down on him, pressing him into his seat. This timeline is no different than the others, even though it is.

" _I'm not ready for the responsibility._ "

It's the Echo Flower next to the bench. Sans laughs a little and tells it "neither am I."

" _Neither am I,_ " it replies.

With a sigh, Sans leans back and rests his head on the top of the bench back, looking at the glowing rocks dotting the cavern ceiling. If he squints, he can pretend they're stars and planets, galaxies where none of this matters, where nobody cares that most of the Underground is dead. Heh. He could probably look at the Surface and find the same thing. Maybe one day he'll be able to look in the mirror and find the distance there too, the lack of sympathy for the dead, but that day hasn't come yet. For now, all he can do is sleep and pray for a reset, pray for the human of bad laughs and good friends, and pray for his brother to be back tomorrow.

Papyrus...

He sleeps and dreams of Snowdin, but all the snow is ash, and there are Echo Flowers growing in his brother's bones.

He wakes up in the Waterfall room, neck cricked from sleeping in an awkward position for so long. The Echo Flower greets him with a muttered " _Papyrus..."._

It's time to begin being King.


	3. King of Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're king now, Sans. Congratulations. Now, what do you want to do with all the dead people on the streets?

Everyone looks at him expectantly as he arrives. It seems they've been doing that a lot lately. He's starting to get used to it, but he doesn't want to. 

"Today, we're going to start off with something that needs to be addressed, as uncomfortable as it is." Sans looks as many monsters in the eye as he can. This isn't going to be fun. "What do we want to do with the dust?"

Shocked murmurs spreads along the crowd like electricity. Nobody wants to acknowledge the horrors that have happened, to move on when it's still so fresh, but Sans knows something has to be done. They can't choke on the dust with every breath they take, can't let it coat their food with each bite, can't let it settle into their skin with every passing moment. Doing that would mean staying stuck, and every timeline has shown that the people need the dust out of sight to get it out of mind.

"I have an idea," a familiar voice says. Cymra. She still sounds beaten down, but there's strength in her voice now that wasn't there before. "We could put them where the human fell down. There's a patch of golden flowers there, and it has a view of the stars when it's night. Besides, if another one falls down, the dead will have the first judgement. The dust will cover the human, and so they'll be there when we kill it. They'll get their revenge."

There's a pause, a moment of silence, and nobody else seems to be able to come up with a better answer. To be left under the stars seems kinder than to be left under tons of rock. With that cheery start out of the way, Sans moves on to the other affairs.

"Alright, let's get down to business. Which of you here knows how to farm?" A fair number of monsters raise their hands, but not many. It isn't nearly enough to sustain the few hundred people that are still alive. Sans had been expecting this, though. "Each of you choose a few people as your students. Farming is now our number one priority, so you get to pick whomever you like. People who get picked should be proud; this is an honorable job you're going to be doing." He pauses for a moment. No one moves. "Right away. You should pick now, and then go and see if the crops have been affected. Start with that, and if there are any problems, come to me."

The farmers shuffle around hesitantly, awkwardly picking some of the others among the crowd. Most of the chosen are young and fit; some seem pleased, others less so. They all stand to the side when they're finished, little groups forming into one larger group. Now farmers and their new students make up about a third of the people gathered.

"Alright, you all can go do your thing. I'd like a report at the end of the day. You may go." That only leaves him with two thirds of the people. Yay. "The rest of you, does anyone have some useful talent they can contribute?"

A second passes, then a red-feathered monster raises their hand. "I can cook pretty well. I'm- I was a chef here. I mean, I-I don't know if that's what you meant..." 

"Sure. Can you cook for everyone?" Their feathers abruptly turn a dark purple. "I'll take that as a no. How many people do you need?"

"For t-this many people? M-maybe we can try starting with twenty-five?"

Sans nods decisively. "Alright. Volunteers?" 

The spots get filled pretty quickly. It's a bit of a bizarre mix, and Sans is pretty sure that at least one of them is going to have to get replaced so that there won't be clashing personalities. Still, he'll see how it goes.

"Go talk to the farmers, see what they're going to have. Will I be able to expect a group dinner, or should I tell everyone to keep eating what's in their houses for a few nights?"

"I-I think maybe tomorrow?"

"Good to know. You all can go get acquainted and trained." They head off in the direction of the city- a nicer part, it seems. "Anyone else have anything I should know about?"

"I used to maintain the Core!" It's an excitable-looking mousy monster this time, and Sans privately wonders how they had managed to contain their energy before. 

"Excellent! Do you know how to run all of it, or do you need some manuals on how to do the rest of it?"

"I know how all of it works. At least, I know enough to maintain it. I'ma need some other people to help me though."

"How many?"

"Roundabouts fifteen, maybe twenty if you're feeling generous, for safety."

"Let's go with seventeen. Anyone?" People are less quick to join this team, and after what Sans has seen, he can't blame them. It's dangerous, and the accidents can be... terrifying. Still, they scrounge up enough people, and they, too, are sent on their way. 

It goes on like this for a bit, whittling the crowd down into various jobs- a few doctors, some teachers and children, some people to scavenge the dumps, a ragtag Royal Guard, and a team of miscellaneous task-doers to do things like collect water from Waterfall for storage. Sans also chooses Cymra and Ligat to help him with leadership. Cymra's smile is sweet, and Ligat's is sharp. Sans cuts to the chase.

"There's going to be a lot of questions today, and I'm going to need you to be able to answer them without me. Think of this as a sort of test run. You'll report back to me without bias. I need to be able to trust you both to be impartial, because I need to have someone without any faction loyalty to be able to tell me the facts of the matter. Any sign that you're lying to me and you'll be fired, no further questions asked. Have I made myself clear?"

They both nod. Ligat looks a bit like he's swallowing his tongue, but he doesn't comment.

"You both go and do that, then. I'm going to clean up the dust." Cymra looks slightly shocked at that. 

"You're going to clean it up yourself, Your Majesty? But, shouldn't someone else be doing that?"

There's a headache starting to form behind Sans' left orbital. "Nah. Everyone's been through enough, don't you think? I'm not gonna make them sweep up their loved ones. Besides, my magic is actually pretty good for this." 

"I-if you say so, sir." She looks doubtful. She probably had expected him to basically stand there and look pretty, which is something Asgore had done, to an extent. Well, Asgore had stood there looking intimidating, but the best Sans could manage was grim, which didn't really suit him. To be fair, work didn't suit him either. Ah well.

"I guess I do say so. Now, you guys go and make like clocks." They look confused. Sans grins. "Watch." Their expressions don't change, and Sans sighs. "Go and watch everyone, make sure they're doing what they're supposed to."

They still look a bit confused, but they do as he asked and leave. Sans makes a mental note to tone down the jokes. Admittedly, that one had been pretty weak, but still. A patronizing smile would have been enough for him, but apparently assuming leadership meant assuming a humorless persona. Welp, he can change that, slowly but surely. First, though, he has some things to take care of. 

Sans, despite his assurances to the cat-monster, had never actually tried to move monster dust with his magic. It wasn't exactly something that came up in daily life, and it had never been asked of him in past timelines. Still, it should work, theoretically. Sans could move both objects and souls, after all. There was always a chance, however slim, that the weird in-between state of dust would mess with his magic. More likely, moving a million tiny objects would be a lot more difficult than moving one big one. Nevertheless, he has to try.

Wrapping an imaginary hand around the metaphorical threads of magic wound tightly against his soul, Sans casts a vaguely shimmering net onto all the dust he could reach, which covers the square and into some of the alleyways. Being careful not to accidentally include any normal dirt or some of the flagstones, he tugs the net, gently. The dust begins to hover above the ground by about an inch. It glimmers in the light, both that of the city and of his magic. It seems, if one were to look at it long enough, as though there were a pearlescent rainbow in the motes. While monster souls all are white, white is merely all colors combined, and some souls have certain tinges to them when the light hits them right. Sans knows, from experience and personality, that his brother's soul is- was a mix of green and orange, kindness and bravery. Sans doesn't know what his own soul looks like, too afraid of what he might see to check.

But right now isn't about him. It's about them. With a quick tug, he pulls the dust along like a kite, letting it swirl and flow as it wants to, as long as it goes in the general direction he wants it to. The dust is a bit different from an everyday object; it feels almost alive, in the way the earth is alive, teeming with an invisible, quiet energy unnoticeable to the everyday passerby. As surely as it feels alive, though, it is dead. Dead from the human with their merciless blade in hand and LOVE in their heart. Dead because Sans didn't do anything, couldn't do anything. 

He has to focus on the people who are still alive. 

The second time through the Underground is quiet save for the rush of dust and shuffle of feet. Sans had swung by the throne room before heading back towards the ruins, finding the green and cyan of Asgore's kind and patient soul. There was another pile of dust, surprisingly enough, which didn't shine so much as absorb light. Sans keeps them both in a separate cloud from the rest of the dust. Asgore's hangs about his shoulders like a cape, and the mysterious dark dust hovers about his feet, as though it were trying to trip him. After sweeping through most of the city, pulling the dust from the walls and floors of the homes and streets, Sans stops by the fields. He asks whether the farmers would like to take a short break- they'd been working for a few hours at that point; gathering the dust from the labyrinth of streets was pretty time consuming- and come with him to collect and spread the dust. Most agree, though some just work a bit harder, not looking up as the congregation leaves. The cooks- who seem to be getting along rather well, actually- also come with. Same with the Core technicians when they stop through Hotland, save the mousy monster who insists on staying to keep the Core running. 

When they stop by the labs, Alphys' dust is lavender, and it's so fine as to almost disappear into the spaces of her keyboard.

Undyne didn't leave dust, but an orange-yellow-red, brave-just-determined liquid. It takes a bit of thought, but Sans carries it to Hotland and holds it over the magma, letting the liquid boil away to dusty specks. It's more flaky than dusty, but it's close enough.

Both of them get their own stream of dust, though the purple and red-orange-yellow twine together almost of their own volition. Their dust shifts between his hands, covering and linking them, sliding between his phalanges and joints like sand.

Nobody mentions it.

Waterfall's dust is difficult to pull from the mud, which was to be expected. The monsters are forced to stand among the screams of the Echo Flowers as Sans dredges his magical net through the muck. It's difficult, but he manages to get at least most of it free, each speck of dust pristine despite the muck it had lain in. 

Moving on to Snowdin is a relief for the monsters trailing behind the dust, but not for the one controlling it. With everyone following him, Sans shoves the hurt into the back of his skull, waiting to deal with it some other time. It gets difficult when he sees the patch of orange-green he knows to be his brother- has known from timelines past. He could probably tell by feel alone, if necessary. Papyrus' dust always seems coarser than most monsters', but strangely also softer. Papyrus' dust winds itself in front of Sans' ribcage, hovering over the place his soul rests. Dust doesn't have a scent, but Sans could swear that it almost smells like spaghetti for a moment, followed by the echo of a 'NYEH HEH HEH'. 

Once Snowdin is cleared, they all walk to the door of the ruins. While most of the monsters had never been as far as Snowdin, a few had. Sans and Cymra, however were the only ones alive who had been inside the ruins. The doors creak open, and as everyone slowly steps inside, the isolation of years upon years is broken. Toriel's dust, just on the other side of the door where she and Sans used to tell knock-knock jokes, was the deep blue of integrity. It gets its own ribbon as well, wreathing itself around Sans' head like a halo. It's almost a comfort, but it also hurts, as though it were a crown of thorned roses.

The rest of the ruins passes by fairly quickly, only a few monsters having met their end here. The dust, like the fabled Northern Lights of the Surface, floated above the heads of the procession, stretching back down the hallway leading to the flower room. Slowly, as the living monsters poured into the single skylit room in the Underground, Sans pulls the dust along with them. The few monsters that had chosen to remain behind joined in, a monster having been dispatched earlier to fetch them for the scattering of the dust. The sky, from where it is visible in through the hole, is a blushing golden-rose color. Rays of sunlight show in motes of dust like gauzy strips, and the pink turns the rest of the specks the color of faint determination. It seems almost poetic. 

It also seems like a shame. Such beautiful colors, the remnants of such beautiful people, should not be left to blend with the dirt and the darkness. They should remain as they are, elegant and twisting, arcing up towards the stars and the freedom they had craved in life. Sans should let them. 

A feeling, new and powerful, begins in Sans' soul, beneath where Papyrus' dust still swirls. The threads of his magic begin to shift, pulling the dust into a large, curving spiral around the bed of flowers, larger towards the base and narrowing to a sheer point at the top, where it almost touches the skylight. It looks as though a ribbon of shifting dust has been spun so that it circles the flowers, and that if you were to stand on the patch and look up, you could see the sky without obstruction. Its shape fills Sans with something like... hope.

The threads of magic holding the dust aloft pause in their movement, silencing the shifting of particles. With a deep breath, Sans instinctively reaches for the section of his soul magic he reserves for battles: His blasters. More specifically, their energy. With a moment of searching, he finds it, pulsing and glowing near the center of his soul. Shuddering, he cups it in imaginary hands, basking in it for a moment, barely a second. Then, with a sharp movement, he connects it to the threads of magic holding the dust aloft. Like connecting wires to a battery, there's a surge of energy that rushes along the threads, lighting the room a brilliant white. Pain shoots along Sans' senses, and he can feel every inch of magic in a way he never had before, feels connected to the dust of these monsters he had never known, or never known well. It feels like being everywhere at once, like being spread in the void over all of time and space. It's electrifying, heady, overwhelming.

And then, it's over. The energy dissipates slowly, light dimming fractionally, and then at once. Sans closes his eyes, curls slightly over his ribcage. His head feels heavy, and his chest feels empty in a way that is both hollow and light. Gasps come from around him, whispered surprise and shock. He ignores it for a moment, allows himself a moment of darkness after the light. Then he opens his eyes.   
A crystalline sculpture towers above him, just the way the dust had before. It's prismatic, casting rainbows along the walls and inside the sculpture itself, kaleidoscopic. Sans, in a daze, steps forward and places the tip of a finger on the surface. Little dips and whorls cover the exterior, giving it detail and life, yet still smooth and slightly tingly to the touch. 

Sans had turned the dust to beautiful, empyrean glass.

As Sans turns away from the glass of the monsters past, he feels a slight shift on the top of his skull. Reaching up in confusion, his fingers discover another smooth surface, like the glass on the sculpture. Pulling it off, he sees that it's a circlet, like the kind the kind the queen and king used to wear, before Toriel fled to the ruins and Asgore permanently donned his war helmet. This one, however, is made of the same pure material as the dust-glass, though the colors seem a bit brighter. 

Sans' eyes widen at the rough area of red-orange-yellow along the bottom of the crown. That- that was Undyne's ruby blood, intermingled with Alphys' amethyst blush. This is made up of his friends' dust. Toriel's sapphire lines the left half of the circlet, while Asgore's turquoise mix takes the right. Strangely, in the back, where the two colors should have met, there's only a jet black, the mysterious dust from the throne room. The thing that makes a sob well in Sans' chest, through, is the center, where the glass pulls up into a point. The colors are a bright, distinctive mix of amber and emerald, bravery and kindness.

Papyrus...

With a start, Sans realizes that, yet again, all eyes are on him. This time, though, they don't look at him with the distrust of a stranger or the admiration of a king. No, they're looking at him with the awe of a deity.   
This should feel terrifying. This should make him want to smile, deflect, make everyone look at someone else. Instead, holding the crown of his friends in his hands, it feels right. 

With steady hands, Sans places the crown back on his head, letting it settle into where it naturally fits his skull. The crowd lets out a cheer that bounces off the walls and towards the heavens, loud enough to be heard by the Surface.

And as the sun sets and the light of the stars begins to reflect off of the lustrous glass spiral, the crowd of monsters bows to their new king.

"All hail King Sans!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah... This chapter. It's either going to be the cringiest thing or kinda almost cool. Based on the fact that I can't really look at this chapter anymore, I'd say the latter, but I can't really ever look at my writing, soooo... yeah. Tell me which it is, if you want, and how I can maybe make it less embarrassing. I don't know about in writing, but it's cool in my head, so I'm just gonna hope it translated. Ah, well. Hope it doesn't haunt me in the years to come! (Also, fight me about the soul colors. Seriously, do. I'd love to hear all your interpretations!)
> 
> (I'm so sorry for this, holy heck.)


	4. King of Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You see the title? Yeah, it's not gonna last long.

After that, things quickly fall into a routine. People adjust to their new lifestyles- which, in some cases, aren't actually all that different than before- and mourn the dead. The farmers manage to salvage most of the crops, since they had only been left alone for about a day, but a few had become infected by the dust and had to be burned. The cooks manage, somehow, to churn out a hot meal every morning and evening- as well as cold lunches that the miscellaneous crew passes out every afternoon- and everyone gathers in the Judgement Hall for breakfast and dinner. There had been a few long tables in storage in the castle, so those had been pulled up for people to eat on. It's a strange new tradition, these communal meals. Camaraderie grows with every bite shared, and the Hall is full of lively chatter almost more often than not. It always stops after dinner is over, when everyone makes their daily trek to the crystalline gravestone to watch the sun set and the stars come out. 

Sans always is the last to rise after the meal is over, but he leads the walk every day with confident strides. He's also first to leave after the stars come out, leading everyone to the warmth of their houses. 

His days are spent drafting the new laws and regulations, which is tedious and technical. It's hard to remember what worked in the past and figure out whether it will work in this timeline. In the middle of wording particularly difficult clauses, he often finds himself wishing for a reset. When he finds himself thinking like that, he has to remind himself that isn't as bad as it could be. Sure, most of the Underground is dead, but what's left is getting along pretty well. If they can manage, Sans can manage. 

Except when he can't. But nobody else can find out. They've grown to revere him, and he can't break it to them that he's merely a normal monster, worse than any of them here. There's no one that remembers him as the lazy, punny Snowdin sentry from before the human, only the mysterious and powerful Judge-turned-King that turned dust to glass. 

So they can't know that he avoids sleeping in the castle or some abandoned house near there, choosing instead to fall asleep on a bench next to a lonely Echo Flower. They can't know that he sometimes wakes up in a cold sweat, feeling phantom crimson liquid dripping between his ribs and Papyrus' name in his teeth. They can't know that every bite of the- surely delicious- food whipped up by the cooks tastes like dust, and that sometimes he just wants to skip ahead to the next reset, even though to the others it would seem like the death of any hope instead of the act of faith it is. There will be another reset, Sans is sure, but there's never any certainty.

Certainty is impossible when humans are involved. 

Sometimes people come in to ask him about the way things should be done, or ask about changing their jobs. Since it's all pretty arbitrary, Sans usually agrees to the changes and explains the methods. After all, one of the things he learned when Toriel was overthrown in another timeline is the importance of keeping people happy. If they aren't- well. Things happen.

Someone's also making a change to his wardrobe, a niece of Muffet's named Misumena. Apparently his clothes aren't "kingly enough", whatever that means. Shorts and a hoodie are perfectly acceptable, even if they are a bit torn and muddy. It's the rest of him that isn't fit to rule.

Cymra and Ligat come in one day with questions from the Royal Guard about what exactly they should do with a human if they find one. Sans deflects the question as much as possible, saying "bring them to me" as if that weren't already the pretty obvious course of action. They bow as they leave, and he's pretty sure only Cymra is being sincere. Sans isn't sure whether to be relieved or worried that Ligat is making fun of him. 

He chooses to not think about it.

The new laws are finished in a week, or somewhere thereabouts. Sans is almost surprised at how productive he was. He decides to reveal the new laws at the dinner that night, since everybody's actually going to be together and maybe even in a good mood. There's going to be complaints, of course. There always are. 

And he isn't disappointed. Everyone seems pretty okay with most of them, like the punishments for violence and theft- imprisonment based on severity-, but they're adamantly opposed to the main policy. The one he knew they would be. 

"Keep the human alive?" That one. "After everything the last one did? Be kind? Are you insane?" It's not like Sans hasn't wondered the same thing. 

"Well, it isn't like we can really stop them if they're determined, is it?" Ah, yes. Encouraging words from the ruler. Exactly what everyone wants to hear. "If we befriend them, they might not kill us."  
"What about our revenge? What about freedom?" Sans is pretty sure this is the 'every monster for themselves' person. Full of great ideas, this one. 

"I'm not saying we won't get those things. We need their information about the Surface, and their cooperation if we can get it. If it comes to it and I have enough time, I can prepare something for the soul so it can't reset." That's a lie. The only way was for the soul to give up, but the others can't know that. "We won't get that time if they come through, we kill them, and they go back and kill us all on sight."

They don't look very mollified, but they content themselves with some irritated muttering. Everyone else looks unsure, and Ligat steps forward smoothly.

"And if they come through and kill the rest of us anyway? You can't be suggesting we roll over and take it, are you?" 

Sans rubs his forehead to quell the growing- and ever more frequent- headache. "No, I'm not. If they're dangerous, protect yourself. Personal safety comes first. It's just that we can't assume the human will be violent, and we can't afford the make them so while trying to get revenge. We have to think about our future." Which includes praying for reset. 

"And what if they are this innocent creature?" Ligat asks distastefully. "Will we just have to wait until it dies of natural causes, or until it snaps and takes one of our souls to cross the barrier?"

"We will have to base it on the human that comes down." Sans is pretty sure that wasn't the right thing to say, but he's sick of this conversation already.

"So you've spent this past week making rules, but you haven't planned for the most important thing that could happen?"

"Is this disrespect I hear, Ligat?" Yes. Yes it is. Sans lets his eyelights wink out and his voice go low. "Because that would be a b a d i d e a."

Ligat pales slightly, looking a bit nervous for the first time. "No, sir." Not even a little bit mocking this time. Good. Sans lets his eyelights flick back on.

"Well, that's a relief. Anyway. To answer your question, the first third of the rules have to do with the human. If you'd bothered to read it when I sent it to you for revision, you'd know that. I was simply summing it up to save time." Sans glances at the rest of the table, where most of the monsters are avoiding eye contact. Even Cymra looks a bit hesitant. "Welp. I guess it's time to head out."

With that, he stands and begins the journey to the Ruins. It's even more quiet than normal on the walk, a kind of awkward tension covering the crowd like a blanket. The monument of glass is as beautiful as it always is when they arrive, catching the hues of sunset as it always does. This time, though, Sans turns his gaze to the hole in the rocky ceiling and the sky beyond it. Not for the first time, he wonders if they all really want to make it to the Surface at all. If a mere child can have so much hatred in their heart, what does it say about the rest of them? Maybe Asgore was right the whole time, stalling to keep everybody safe underground. Maybe they had all gotten it wrong in the stories, and the Barrier was to keep the monsters safe, not the humans. Maybe the glimpse of the sky through an opening far above anyone's head was enough to last them all through a lifetime.

Maybe none of this mattered at all.

The stars were out again. Time to head home. And yet, Sans glanced back as he left, footsteps leading one way as his gaze lead another.

The others had their bittersweet expressions of a mourning step towards acceptance, minds already heading toward the warmth of their beds. Nobody else looked back, already having committed the night's sky to their memories. They would dream of things that made no sense or made too much sense, fantasy mixing with reality in their minds. They would wake up with only the faintest remembrance of adventure, and continue on to their day. 

Sans would watch the glowing stones in the sky, pretending they were stars, until he fell asleep and dreamt of nothing. Nobody would watch the sky's stars change to dawn change to day. Nobody would just lie down and feel time wash over them like water, dripping and running in elegant and nonsensical patterns. And nobody would sit and wait for the human to arrive. It would have been a long wait, had they chosen to. 

They did not choose to, and they all went about their lives, or whatever passed as such. Time went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a filler chapter, mostly. Honestly, this shouldn't be what I give after such a wait, but let me tell you: things get interesting next chapter. Also, I'm starting to catch up to what I've already written, so it may be longer between updates. On the other hand, it's getting more interesting to write. So we'll see.


	5. King of Famine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.

Things continue much in the same way as the years pass. With the laws out of the way, Sans can- and does- make frequent rounds with the people, checking up with them so often they don't even need to debrief him at the end of the day. Occasionally, when there isn't anything else to do, Sans helps scavenge the dumps for anything useful or relevant. Everyone sees it as a sign of humility in their king, that he's willing to put himself on the level of the lowest. Ironically, this elevates their view of him even more. In reality, Sans has to keep himself working, keep himself moving. Otherwise he'll fall into a despair so deep he'll never find his way out of. Besides, he's probably the worst of everyone in the Underground. He deserves to spend some time digging through the trash.

The waterlogged newspapers that get swept down tell no stories of serial killers or murderous children, so Sans is left to assume that their grudge really was only with the monsters. That, or they're good at hiding their tracks. It doesn't matter now. They're on the Surface.

He can't force them to reset. 

...It's probably a bad idea for him to work around human artifacts. Still, when he finds a mostly-pristine copy of a college calculus textbook, he knows it's worth it. The science team- created just after the laws had been set- will be thrilled. The humans, while not actually more scientifically and mathematically advanced, have ideas that would have never occurred to monsters, partially because being trapped underground limits certain observations. Sunlight, for example. Seeing rainbows dance over the cavern walls from a prism had been a revelation of sorts, though it was commonplace now. It wasn't that prisms were particularly useful to everyday life, but they were beautiful in a time where people needed beauty.

Speaking of beauty, as Sans begins to trudge back to the labs in Hotland, the capital's streets have become massive works of art. Colorful murals decorate most wall space on buildings. There are paintings of the Surface based on a collage of human photographs and pure imagination, with rainforests and beaches and floating cities. And the skies. Oh, the skies. Blocks upon blocks are dedicated to the color of the sky, to the near infinite shades and texture, glimpsed through a small window in their prison of rock.

It gave people hope. It gave people an outlet for their grief and their love, and Sans supported it wholeheartedly. There were days devoted to creating art on surfaces of all types, and community activities like the design on the seamstress' door, which was Sans' way of repaying her for his new outfit. 

His new, magically enhanced clothes now included a deep purple hoodie that seemed to flow into a cape, the fabric of which came from Asgore's own cloak, and a simple white shirt and navy pants. The things that made resound in his soul, though, were the symbols. The Delta Rune had been sewn into the hoodie, reminiscent of the dress Toriel had worn in the timelines they had met face to face, and the small badge worked in over the spot where his soul lies. It's the same one as Sans had put on his brother's battle body, "because that's what cool guys wear, Sans."

Papyrus...

Even better, it has pockets. Really, really good pockets. Enough to fit a textbook in, which he has, this time. It's heavy against his side as he opens the doors to the labs, feeling a wave of cool air and a quiet chorus of greetings wash over him. He returns them all with a grin, pulling the book out and holding it above his head. Attention returns to him, they all let out cheers when they see what he has. As they swarm to be the first to read it, Sans' smile feels almost genuine. He kind of wants to hold it above their heads to tease them, but that would require his reach to be longer than theirs, which it definitely is not. Instead, he lets them have it, a translucent purple monster winning out to get to read it first. The others mumble good-naturedly and go back to what they were working on, though one monster tries to read the text through the purple one. It ends up with a light smack to the face delivered by a coiled tentacle, and their grumbles are a bit less good-natured than the others.  
Sans sticks around the labs for a bit, remarking on all the progress they've made. It is quite a bit of progress, too, if only because there had only been one working scientist in the whole of the Underground in the years before the human fell. There had been a time, before that, where things had advanced even faster than they are now- but it's best not to think about it. Those times are gone, along with the one working scientist and most of the Underground's people, and it's better to focus on what's happening now. Here and now, specifically, because sometimes Sans catches vivid glimpses of the same point in a different timeline, someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake as everyone smiles on, Mettaton giving yet another eloquently rehearsed speech, or watching anime with Undyne and Alphys. It's always gone almost before he even realizes it's happened, like a second of film from the wrong movie had been cut in for a few frames. They stick with him for days, leaving him lost in his own skull. The glimpses are always so much brighter than the world Sans walks through, the vibrancy of the colors muted by an invisible gray dust that had already long been removed.

He's getting lost again. When nobody is watching, Sans tilts his head forward slightly to let the imaginary dust pour out his eye sockets, to clear his vision for color. It's a strange coping mechanism, but it's worked so far; it brings him to a greater awareness, anyway. It works again, and the color bleeds back into the world from the corners of his eyes. Sans straightens back up and readjusts his hoodie, brushing himself off and pulling at the slightly-too-long sleeves. With a small wave, he leaves the scientists to their work and new book, the farewells far more distracted than the hellos. 

As the unbridled heat of Hotland washes over him, Sans makes his way to the fields where the farmers work. He could probably take a shortcut, but Sans has grown a bit fond of walking because he doesn't have to think, or talk, or pretend. If he'd had a fleshy body, he'd probably be in the best shape of his life. As it is, his bones have gained a roughness and toughness they didn't used to have, both courtesy of the walking and as a response the small scores from the human. It had taken a while to notice, but once he had, he couldn't stop noticing. He'd run his hands over the nicks and scratches in the rough bone, the places where the bone had knitted over to form small bumps that were almost like scars. It was mesmerizing, in its own way; seeing where the human had left their mark so permanently, yet knowing it could all be taken away in an instant, replaced with polished white and a morning in Snowdin. 

The fields slowly come up on the horizon, speckled with the hardworking farmers decked out in loose, comfortable clothing. Doera, one of the more leader-like monsters, spots him first. She looks a bit worried as she makes her way over, splotches of dirt clinging to her caramel fur as her hooves squish through the muddy crops. Sans makes sure to greet her with a smile, even as a small ribbon of uneasiness creeps up his vertebrae. She still looks nervous, dusting off her overalls and adjusting the big, floppy hat that tends to dip into her eyes.

"So, how're things?" It's how he always asks questions, room for both the personal and impersonal. Knowing everyone as best he can is important, and even if they avoid the personal, that tells him something too.

"They're- they're not great." Her giant brown eyes are slightly mournful. "Some of the crops seem to have gotten dust-rot, and we didn't realize until it reached the more advanced stages. Harriet- you know, the little rabbit girl with the white and brown fur and purple eyes- she was small enough to spot the first of it under the leaves of the silverleaf this morning. We're trying to contain it now."

"What're the chances of containment?"

"It depends on how far it's spread. So far, it doesn't seem too bad, but it could have affected more than we know right now." She pauses a moment, before continuing a bit quieter than before. "And, you know, I don't know if what we have will work against it. It's not gray like it usually is, but kind of blackish. I mean, what we've got might work, but there's a chance it won't and we won't be able to contain it."

"And if we can't contain it?"

Doera's expression turns grave. "Then we have a famine."

"Well, stars." Sans rubs the back of his neck, browridges furrowed. "That's... not great. D'you need me to divert some of the others to help out? I could always make the science team take a break. Angel knows they need to get out once in a while."

"There's not much they could do, to be honest. It just depends on how well the treatments work, and if we can catch it all. We've got enough people to do the job, if the job can be done."  
"I can ask 'em to work on some updated sprays if you want, see what the labs can whip up." Whatever the scientists could come up with, Sans knows, would likely take longer than they could afford. Many of them were new to practicing science as an actual job, and biology was no easy subject. There was a reason Sans had turned to theoretical physics, magic, and soul mechanics instead. Those were far less complicated, when you got down to it.

Doera looks grateful at the idea, though. "That would be wonderful, thank you."

"I'll go talk to them, then, and I'll let you get back to work." Doera nods and turns back to the fields, leaving Sans to return to the labs.

He doesn't feel up to the walk this time, so he takes a shortcut to the lab entrance. Everyone looks surprised to see him again, but they try to hide their nerves with welcoming smiles that disappear when Sans explains the situation. They promise they'll do their best, but Sans can see the doubt in their eyes and bodies. It's like he predicted, then. They won't be able to stop this with such a short timeline. The only hope is with the treatments the farmers already have. He thanks the scientists anyway and heads to find Ligat and Cymra.

He finds them in the castle, talking to a couple of monsters over some petty dispute. They've been in here before, and Sans is pretty sure they just don't want to problem-solve for themselves. They scurry away when they see Sans waiting, which is understandable. He's not exactly happy, and he's sure it's showing. Cymra looks concerned at his expression, and Ligat just looks vaguely amused. The amusement fades when he tells them about the dust-rot. 

"What do you guys think we should do?" Sans asks once he's finished filling them in.

"We need to start rationing," Ligat responds immediately. "If it all turns out fine, then everyone'll just have been a bit hungrier than usual for a few days. If not, we'll have gotten a few more days out of our food."

"And we'll need to reassure people, make sure they don't panic," Cymra cuts in. "Panic is the last thing we need right now. Or ever, I guess, but especially now."

"And if they do panic?" Ligat asks smoothly. 

"What do we do then? Have the Royal Guard restrain them?" 

"That'll just make them panic more." 

"It might prevent people from giving in to it, reminding them there's order and keeping them from damaging themselves or others."

"Or," Sans says, causing the two to look back at him. "It'll make them angry and make them think we're controlling them and protecting ourselves instead of protecting them." He had seen this happen in the end days of Toriel's reign as queen in other timelines, right before Undyne took control as empress. Tori had tried to tell the Guard to prevent them from rioting and destroying things, and it had only escalated everything. She always got exiled quickly after that, but at least they left her alive. Sans wasn't sure if that would be the case this time. Grief and loss had hardened everyone, and he had no doubt they would resort to violence if they thought it would help.

"Well, then what do we do if they do panic?" Cymra asked tilting her head to the side.  
"Because I don't think there's anything else we could do."

"Promise progress," Ligat suggested.

"In what way?" 

"We three know the scientist won't come up with a cure for dust-rot, but the public doesn't know that. We tell them things are looking up, that it's going to be okay because science, then they'll believe us."

Cymra looks shocked. "You mean… lie?"

"To protect the people, yes, I do." 

"But that's dishonest! The people need to know the truth!"

"Do they?" Ligat looks deep into Cymra's eyes and tries to put his hand on her arm. She shakes it off.

"Yes!" 

"Why?"

"Because…" Cymra looks lost for words for a moment, glancing around as if looking for reasons. "Because they need to know the situation! They need to know their chances!" 

"And if knowing the chances lowers them? I mean, panic takes energy, energy they might not have to spare. Do you want to risk it?" 

"I," Cymra glances away from Ligat's piercing gaze. "I don't…"

"And you, Sans? What do you think?" Ligat shifts his stare to Sans. Sans doesn't blink, gazing steadily back.

"It's a quick fix. It won't work for too long. People need results to go with the promises, and if we can't get the results, then we're screwed. It's why I don't make promises."

"But if things are getting desperate?" Ligat asks.  
"Then maybe."

"I can't believe you!" Cymra hisses, claws extending almost unconsciously. "You're talking about lying to everyone, about giving them false hope for things that might never happen!"

"Better false hope than no hope, my dear," Ligat responds calmly.

Cymra takes a half step back, anger turning to faint horror. "I thought I knew you, Ligat. I thought we were friends."

"We are." 

"Not right now we aren't! And you!" She rounds on Sans, expression tuning pleading. He the last time he saw her so vulnerable was in the day of the human, and it sends a pang through his ribcage. "Don't listen to him. The people need the truth. They need to know what's going on. Don't take even that from them; they've lost enough."

"Alright, guys, let's take a breath here," Sans says, eyelights flicking between the two advisors. It's mostly a statement for Cymra, who looks almost on the verge of tears, rather than the ever cool and collected Ligat. "This might all be blown out of proportion. The dust-rot might be contained, and then we'll have been talking about a problem that never came to fruit. Let's just be calm."

"It's not nothing!" Welp, that didn't really calm her down much at all. "I learned about what a manipulative monster- wait. The 'never came to fruit' thing. Was that supposed to be a damned pun?"

She sounds like she really does not want it to be a pun. 

"It was not a pun." It was, though. They just kinda happen sometimes, and he can't help it.

"I can't deal with you right now. Either of you." With that, Cymra turns on her heel and tromps out of the castle, the door slamming behind her with a resounding thud.

There's a moment of silence before Ligat turns to Sans and says, "that could possibly have gone better."

"You think?"  
\----  
It doesn't really get better, either. 

The communal dinners are tense, worry and exhaustion radiating from the scientists and farmers in dull waves that manifest in subdued conversation and long silences. The meals are smaller, too, and less flavorful. While the cooks in the kitchen are trying their best, it isn't enough to compensate for having less substance and fewer spices. 

People aren't happy.

Sans tries his best to keep their spirits up, laughing and joking like he doesn't notice the atmosphere, in the way he hasn't done since he became king. It's conspicuous, he knows, and it only draws attention to the problem, but it's all he can give them. A moment spent laughing is a moment not spent worrying, a moment away from the situation. It just makes it worse when the moment stops and reality starts back up, but it's something to hold on to, in a time where people desperately need something to hold on to.

Because, as the days pass, it becomes clear that the dust-rot had infected too many of the crops before it had been caught. Rows upon rows of silverleaf and nightshrooms and redlock begin to wilt, turning into dusty, inedible mulch. The farmers try to salvage what they can, but it isn't much. It won't last very long, especially not with so many people. People with nonessential jobs are relegated to searching through the dumps to try and scavenge any scraps of useful items the humans had thrown away. Each discovery is a source of relief, coupled with a slow, burning anger. On the one hand, everything helps, even scraps from the Surface. On the other, the humans have so much they can afford to discard food and books and clothes, and the monsters have so little, they're forced to search through it all. Talk of the Surface becomes common again, with all the riches and abundance it must have, everyone seeming to forget that it only took one human child to commit mass murder. Maybe people just think it would be easier to have something tangible to fight, rather than this slow wasting away the beginnings of a famine is causing. Every day, tensions and appetites grow, and it seems inevitable that something has to break.

And so it does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So begins the fall. I'm curious, though; who do you agree with, Cymra or Ligat? (Or I guess Sans, but I mean in principle.) I think I presented it in a pro-Ligat way, but that's just how it happened. Anyway, tell me what you thought about the chapter, if you'd like. I'd love to know!


	6. King of Pestilence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things continue to go downhill, even though they're all already underground.

People start getting sick. It begins with the small child of a single mother, newborn and weak and mewling. A cough develops into a hack evolves into a soul rattling wheeze. Their magic, usually a bright green, fades away to white. By the time the doctors get to the child, it's already too late. The mother says nothing, just scatters the dust among the flowers under the stars. The next day, her dust joins her child's.

Soon after, disease spreads like through the population like water through tissue paper. Everyone looks to Sans, to the science team, for an answer they don't have. Still, the scientists search and search, staying sequestered in the labs for days on end, skipping meals that are steadily shrinking as the famine drags on and delivered in full protective gear. They all start to droop as the near sleeplessness begins to hover over them, lost nights and close confinements grating on their nerves until someone snaps. And yet, despite it all, Sans pushes them to work as hard as they are, to keep a pace that could save the monsters that are weakening and dying. He himself combs the castle library for any past mentions of such a virulent disease, or the response to the growing famine. All he gets are various reports of smaller outbreaks of non-fatal diseases and the fact that during the last famine, the King was overthrown and killed. He leaves the library with a nauseous feeling that has nothing to do with any sickness 

After about a week, there's no real options; people are falling from disease faster than starvation, and any attempts to feed the sick inevitably end up in a bucket. So, soul sinking, Sans speaks out to the masses of the hopeless. He can't give them kind lies now, so he gives them what he can: a plan, however grasping and uncertain. 

The desperate attempts at salvaging crops are abandoned in favor of quarantine, as most of the farmers are beginning to show symptoms of the disease. Sick monsters of all types and ages stay in a secluded indoors area, and the healthy ones are kept away. Most people bury themselves in work of one sort or another, and oftentimes they volunteer as assistants to the nurses in order to see their sick loved ones before it's too late.  Communal meals stop, and so do the nightly trips to the monument. Food- what's available, anyway- is carefully prepared and sent out to rest on doorsteps. Days for the sick are spent in tense, agonizing boredom, whiling away the hours staring at blank walls and clawing through imagination for some sort of respite from the attack in their bodies.

Sans can't afford to do the same, can't let everyone down yet again, can't let them think he's run away, even though he wants to. The labs are still working at full power, everyone wearing a gas mask as they try and find anything to help. It doesn't help that they're split between the dust-rot and this new disease that they've dubbed "angel's blight". Apparently they called it that in honor- though honor isn't really the right word- of the last human, that genocidal maniac that monsters had once prayed for. It's certainly almost as effective of a killer as its namesake, if via a different means. 

It also means that Sans has to walk everywhere. Another lovely aspect of the virus is that it gets to the soul through the magic, which basically means that the more one uses magic, the more likely one is to contract, spread, and progress the disease. While taking shortcuts may not be precisely the same kind of magic the disease thrives on, it isn't worth the risk. This means that Sans is forced to walk through empty streets again, except that people aren't dead but dying, and this time they think he can stop it. As if he could ever stop anything. As if he could ever really help these people. They can't know that, can't ever find out how he's as helpless as they are, that he's floundering. It's why he has to take  these walks, to remind both them and himself that at least this time he's  _ here _ , that even when he has nothing to give, he can give himself. 

Both Ligat and Cymra had told him that he shouldn't do this. Cymra had rejoined his council-not that she had ever  _ really _ left- a few days after the conversation in the castle. She begged him to think of himself, of his health, that he wasn't invincible- hell, that he was weak, almost defenseless. Couldn't he be safe, for her, as her friend? As a friend to all of them? Ligat had reminded him of his duties, that he couldn't be King if he were dead, that people needed him alive. Couldn't he be cautious, as his leader? As a leader to his people?

Sans had told them the same thing: no friend and no king was a true one if they couldn't be there for those who needed him. Sure, he could die from the virus in the streets, but he could die from it in the castle too. Besides. He's done hiding. It might feel safer, but it wasn't, not really. Its impacts are just a bit more insidious, is all. 

Besides, what is death worth when it will all be reset one day anyway? (If it is reset. He's almost beginning to doubt it. But he can't, not yet, because that would mean…)

Anyway, the trips give Sans a pretty good sense of how the kingdom is doing and of how many people are dying. It seems that, at this point, about a third of the population is sick, with an unknown number of silent carriers. It's unclear what the incubation time of the disease is, so there's no real telling.

Weeks pass. Since the farmers are mostly confined to quarantine, food production drops dramatically. There are only three types of jobs now: Core maintenance, nursing, and farming. Monsters who had been working in other professions begin to work the fields as best they can, but their practical knowledge of farming is limited at best. Children help as well, school being abandoned in the face of the crisis. As a whole, the nonessential sections of society shut down, like the slow death of bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Walls with bright decorations that had once been cheery now seem like a perversion of hope, and the once busy and bustling buildings now stand like empty and hollow-eyed corpses. The echo flowers have reverted to eerie silence, the only sound the rush of the river, slow and quiet. Snowdin, which Sans only sees on the walk to the memorial, was completely abandoned years ago and is completely covered with snow, houses getting buried in a thick blanket of frozen white flakes with no one to maintain them. 

It's there Sans goes to take a moment away from the pleading and hopeless eyes of his citizens, standing outside of his old Snowdin home. The famine still rages, but the disease seems to have mostly passed through the population, leaving the immune and the lucky. There are still deaths, but they're slowing. Someday this will be a tragedy in a textbook, but for now, it all weighs heavy on his soul. Everyone had lost someone. Even Sans, though he had thought he had nobody left to lose. 

Cymra had gotten sick. It had started, as it does, with a heaving, tearing cough. The first time it had happened, she talking over the plans with Sans and Ligat. She, strong and capable monster though she was, had looked so scared. 

As the disease progressed, her fur began to fall out in clumps, and her beautiful yellow magic began to fade to white. Sans visited as often as he could afford to, despite her wishes.

"Sans," she had said once. "your people need a leader more than I need a caretaker. You need to be there for them. They need you."

Sans had only said, in a quiet voice that would not hurt her ears, "but I need a friend more than I need a kingdom."

And that was the last time they spoke. When he had returned, there was only dust.

Her death had hit him harder than he had thought it would. He didn't cry- if he hadn't cried before, he wouldn't cry now. Besides, she would be back someday. Everyone would. It was just a matter of time. Even so, it hurt. So he went to Snowdin, to his old bedroom with the now half-witted mattress and self-propelled tornado that was more like a light breeze. 

It was here that he allows himself to break down, staring into space. It's easy to lose himself in the blank space, and he isn't sure how long he's been there when he finally snaps out of it. Taking a deep breath to compose himself, he half-stands before he's suddenly bent double, overcome with acidic, burning coughs. It feels like he's choking, like he's dying. His ribcage is burning almost as though the human had come back through and slashed him with their knife, all flaring agony and forceful intensity. His thoughts blur, hazy with the force of the pain. It was only when the fit subsides that he realized what it means. 

He's going to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Undertale! I... didn't even know it was today until today, honestly, so I wasn't prepared to post today. Yet, once I knew, I was determined to. So... Here's this. I might edit it, might not. We'll see. (Tell me what I should change, and I might do it. Be as specific as you'd like, which includes saying nothing, I suppose.)  
> Also, ten easily gained points for guessing the next chapter title.


	7. King of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaaannnnddd this is where things go downhill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the most graphic chapter yet, as much as my writing style gets graphic, so if you're wanting to make sure you're good with it all, see the end notes. Suffice it to say, stuff gets real.

His hands are shaking. It's a distant realization, and he only notices it at all because of the  _ click click click  _ of his finger bones as they rattle. He might be trembling all over, too, but all he can focus on is a spot on the floor and the clicking of his hands and the fact that he's going to die.

He's going to die.

He's died before, sort of, but. But, it never really happened. Or maybe it did, but then he woke up again, so was it really death, or was it just a morbid sort of sleep? He can't remember the space between death and reset, darkness creeping into the edges of his vision as crimson spilled out from his ribs and through his fingers, and then he was awake in bed, a phantom ache in his soul. After the first few times it had become a routine in itself, just another part of life. Well, perhaps  _ existence _ would be a better word. Still, it was something to cling to.

And then the human had gone and left him here, underground as the ruler of a wasteland. Sure, there had been a few years of recovering, of a hope for the future, but look at where they had ended up, and it was Sans' fault. He had been so sure of a reset that it hadn't felt quite real to him, like he was playing some sort of game. Even when the days had turned to months and years, he had clung desperately to the hope of a reset, but now. Well, now he isn't so sure it'll happen. It's been so long; maybe the human got bored of them all and decided to leave them to rot. He wouldn't put it past them, not at all. They just- they just  _ left _ everyone here. 

They left him to die, slowly, agonizingly, in far more pain than a simple knife wound could ever cause. They left him to run everything even further into the ground, to watch the people he was supposed to protect crumble before his eyes, and soon they won't even have what measly protection Sans can provide left.

**No.**

The thought surprises him with its intensity, so strong he shakes to a stop, turning as still as stone. 

**It won't end like this.**

They believe in him, at least a little. They trust him, despite it all, to find an answer. The monsters that line the halls to talk to him prove that. 

Cymra proved that.

That human took everything from him, again and again and again, but Sans always forgets that the other monsters have lost just as much, without the dull edge of repetition to numb the pain. Well, maybe Sans couldn't protect people from the human before, but the human isn't here now. He can still do something for the people who are left. 

**He can save them.**

There's a rush somewhere deep in his bones, down near the marrow of him, and his smile feels real for the first time in years, if a bit fierce. The slight ache in his soul, the one that he knows will grow until he can't breathe, until he chokes on his own bleached magic, is lost to the rush of energy the floods through him. He doesn't want to die. Maybe everything will reset, but maybe it won't, and he can't leave them like this. It would be easy, so easy, but he can't. This could be his last chance to do something right, to help people.

The way Papyrus would have wanted it.

A cough wracks his body, robbing him of breath. When he stands again, he is full of resolve.

He knows what he has to do. For the people. 

Sans shortcuts to the True Lab.

___

It's worse off than he remembers. Even though it's Hotland, the True Lab is freezing, even to him. The equipment is all rusted or defunct, some of the metal frameworks of works-in-progress collapsed on the floor. There's a white goo all along the floor and in the series of beds that line one of the rooms, but whoever left it has long since left or died. Shivers climb up Sans' spine. It's been too long since he's been here. Nobody who's still alive knows this place exists; Sans hadn't told the other scientists about it for fear of what they could end up doing with the equipment down here. After all, he had seen some of the results of the science that had happened down here, and it hadn't ever ended well.

With that in mind, maybe his own plan isn't the best. Actually, it's almost certainly very, very stupid, but he doesn't have a choice.

He doesn't.

The fridges are right where he remembers them, rusting to brown and long since broken, but the temperature of the whole lab is cold enough so that it doesn't matter. Besides, the contents aren't really affected by temperature, or most anything really. Even after so long, it should all be fine, be usable. At least, he hopes so. Stars, he hopes so.

The inside of the fridge is surprisingly clean, given the circumstances, though Sans would never want to eat food from there. Everything inside is as he expected, and, hand shaking slightly, he draws out a single container full of red liquid marked DT. It tingles even through the plastic, like the feeling of fizzing candies, lightly buzzing and snapping. Beneath that, though, is a deeper, stronger feeling, like magma; it's the slow, inexorable push of the universe, flowing in the path it and it alone chooses. 

This is such a bad idea. 

It's the only thought that runs through Sans' mind as he fills a syringe he'd filched from the current labs with the crimson, watching the liquid like blood rise up in the chamber, but he knows he can't stop now. A detachment falls over him as Sans watches himself ready the needle, silver tip poised like a knife over his arm, and reality feels so distant, trapped somewhere above him. All he can do is see the silver point come closer and closer to bone, until he can feel the small scrape of the metal on the surface of his humerus. It pauses there for a moment, half a moment, half a lifetime, before it pierces through.

Sans can feel himself screaming. It probably has something to do with the fire blazing through his marrow, burning him and filling him with lava, and in a detached way, he's surprised he isn't steaming. The phantom slice on his chest feels like it has become a chasm, gaping open to show his soul, himself, to the world, and he feels so vulnerable. His eyes are screwed shut, but he forces them open, rebelling against his every fiber that is telling him to keep them shut. 

His soul is floating above his chest, a flickering, creamy white surrounded by a halo of pale aqua and yellow magic. Red sparks that are emanating from his body dance around it, striking against the barrier of Sans' own magic. As he watches, a single spark manages to strike through the fog of magic, shattering the blue and yellow like glass and landing on the pure white of Sans' soul. Agony lances through his entire being at the sensation, and the red color flows through his soul like blood through paper, staining his soul a fiery bloodred. 

It's with relief as the blackness that had been eating at his vision takes over, sending Sans into the depths of unconsciousness.

_____

Waking up is… strange. Sans' bones and mind feel heavy, but otherwise fine. The pain of invasive magic- well,  _ something; _ it isn't exactly magic, but that's a close enough phrase to use- had mostly faded to a dull ache in his soul. It still hovers above him, exceedingly vulnerable, with white and red swirling like water and oil under the surface. The only true pain is from his arm where he had jabbed the needle in, radiating from the puncture wound and scratches from broken glass. The syringe was broken on the ground- hence the glass- probably from him collapsing on it at some point. His wound throbs at just the thought.

Sans pushes himself up off the ground, brushing off the glass shards clinging to his clothes and listening to the way they shatter on the ground. His motions are startlingly graceful, fluid in a way he's never been before. It's unnerving, but he'll get over it. With a flick of the wrist, he pulls his soul back within himself, letting the feeling of safety wash over him with its return. Everything is in order. 

After making sure that he hasn't forgotten anything- he certainly doesn't want to have to come back here- he takes a shortcut to "his" room in the palace, which he had specifically instructed for nobody to enter under any circumstance. It's bare and cold-feeling, but it's still a million times more comforting than the True Lab. He leaves immediately, heading for the throne/common room. He doesn't know how long he's been out, but he can tell it's been at least a few hours, because while the Underground doesn't exactly have changeable light or weather, there's some sort of feeling in the air that changes over the course of a day, though nobody is quite sure why. He can only hope it hasn't been too long, and he braces himself for the looks on people's faces when they see him, for the chance that they can see what he's done to himself, to his soul.

Sans shoves open the large doors to the throne room/judgement hall with a bit too much force, wincing internally at the echoing slam of the doors against the wall. Monsters whirl to face him, turning away from the throne itself, which Sans had never used. 

Ligat is on the throne.

He's got a crowd of monsters in front of him, and his expression is neutral, except for the glint of smugness Sans can see as clear as day in his eyes. Their gazes lock, and Ligat's neutrality shifts to shock, then a smile that Sans knows is fake.

"Sans!" he says, voice loud and discordant, the hiss of pointed teeth cutting his name in pieces. "How kind of you to join us at last,  _ my King _ . We were getting worried about you, you know."

"Ligat." Ligat flinches at the sound of Sans' voice. "What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? What am  _ I  _ doing?" Ligat stands from the throne, a long purple cape he had gotten from  _ somewhere _ billowing gently around his feet. "The real question is, what were  _ you  _ doing? Because what  _ I  _ was doing was taking care of the people  _ you _ abandoned for three days doing stars-know-what!"

Three days? It can't be… can it? It only feels like a moment since he injected the DT, and his arm still aches at the injection point. And yet, he almost can believe it. It feels like the Labs were a lifetime ago, though not necessarily in the sense of time itself. It feels more like he's changed, like he's a new monster. In that sense, three days is almost short.

And maybe it's because of this change that Sans doesn't try to placate Ligat and the other monsters crowded about him, but instead pulls himself up and says "What I was doing is none of your business, Ligat."

"None of my-" Ligat looks as shocked as Sans has ever seen him. It's not a good look. "You are the  _ King _ . You cannot just take a vacation whenever you want, much less during a crisis!"

"I assure you that I was not on a  _ vacation _ ." Under no circumstances would being injected with DT be considered a vacation. "I was looking into some possible leads for fixing things, but they didn't pan out." 

"And you didn't think to tell anyone any of this? Let anyone know what you were doing, or that you'd be gone for three days?"

"It was too time-sensitive. The window of availability was closing, and I had to make a snap decision."

"Time-sensitive?" Ligat snorts. "We've been having problems for months, and  _ now _ you come up with this brilliant plan?"

"It was a last resort!" Sans snaps. "There was too much of a risk for it to be worth it until now. I didn't truly think it was an option until my hand was forced."

"And what forced your hand, my King, that hadn't already been forcing it?" Ligat leans forward, teeth glinting in the golden light. "Your people have died, your friends have died, your family has died; what did you have left to force?"

"That's not important." Sans can feel the eyes of his people watching him, feel their gazes burning into his bones, judging him. No.  _ He _ is the Judge, the overseer of justice, and it is not their duty to sentence him, it is his duty to sentence them.

"I think it  _ is  _ important, my King. I think we should all know what it is that motivates you more than we do." A light seems to go on in Ligat's eyes. "Perhaps it is  _ your _ life that forced your hand. I think that you contracted the disease, and you couldn't bear to face death like the rest of us. You thought yourself above us, thought you deserved a chance nobody else got. And now you're back, and you think yourself fit to rule after deserting us."

"That's not true. You have no evidence for any of that." Sans' hands are curled into fists, bone digging into bone, and he's trembling again. This time, though, he's filled with a sort of sick energy, one that rises in the back of his throat like bile. 

"Then by all means, prove me wrong. Tell us what you were really doing, no vagueness, no lies. Where were you? Why did you leave? What did you do? Tell me, and I may even believe you."

"It's not like that!" Sans growls, and haughty amusement passes over Ligat's face. 

"So you won't tell us. A pity." Ligat sits back on the throne, claws scraping against golden metal. "I see now that you are not as fit to rule under crisis as I had once thought. Stick to peacetime, my King. Or should I say,  _ Sans. _ We obviously need a leader more fit for the job at hand."

"This is mutiny." Sans' voice has turned unnaturally calm, and despite his smile, the whole room seems to drop a few degrees. The assorted monsters back away from Sans, looking worriedly at each other. Only Ligat seems unconcerned.

"I prefer to call it self preservation."

And with that, Sans snaps.

With a flash of magic, he peels Ligat- the imposter- from the throne and hurls him into one of the pillars that line the hallway. Scales meet stone with a crunch, and both crack with the force of it. The crowd gasps, but Sans can barely hear them over the rush in his mind, the feeling of power in his grasp. 

Ligat pulls himself up, leaning slightly against the pillar. His fake smiles and calculated politeness are gone, and the glare he fixes Sans with it full of hatred. 

Wiping the dust from his teeth, Ligat sneers and asks "Is that all you've got?" before lunging, claws extended. Sans slams him into another pillar, but Ligat is prepared this time, bracing for impact. He hurls white, scale-shaped bullets back at Sans, which hum past without touching bone. They lodge themselves in the throne and wall before dissolving, leaving deep indents where they had buried themselves. 

Sans replies in kind, summoning ivory and cyan bones from nothingness and whipping them at Ligat. Before any can land a hit, though, a shudder runs through Sans, soul deep. The magic attacks crack and shatter, turning solid bone into needle-sharp slivers that slice through the air like miniature knives. It's too many for Ligat to dodge, and they cut through scale with ease, biting into Ligat's soul. Ligat screams, the lacerations already leaking dust. 

"What-?" Sans almost doesn't realize the voice is his, quavering and uncertain. He doesn't  _ feel _ uncertain. In fact, here and now is the most sure he's felt in a long time, energy rushing like adrenaline. Whatever part of him had spoken has no place in this fight, and yet its voice lingers in the air, quiet and questioning. He shoves the thought aside and readies another attack.

"You  _ have  _ done something, haven't you?" Ligat croaks. He stumbles, but manages to send another wave of bullets at Sans, all of which miss. 

Sans doesn't miss, magic fracturing and expanding like its own attack. He can feel it coming this time, the way his magic swells to the breaking- like a wave- right before it passes the threshold and explodes outwards, spreading through the air like deadly confetti. Ligat crumples to the floor like his strings were cut, dust pooling out around him like the sand from a broken hourglass.

Sans strolls to stand over Ligat's prone form, permanent smile fixed in place. The light from the window casts Sans' shadow over Ligat, the victor over the defeated, and Sans leans down until they're both almost face to face. 

"Any last words?"

"I-" Ligat seems like he's having trouble taking in air, choking on the words. "I… just wanted... to help... people. Let… someone… help you. You've… done something… terrible."

Sans rights himself, looming over his opponent, and he can feel his smile get just a bit sharper. 

"No, Ligat. I haven't done something terrible; I've done something wonderful."

And with that, he summons his blasters, feeling the magic of them crackle and spark in a way they never have before. They appear behind him, skulls cracked like porcelain and eye sockets glowing like embers.

"Goodbye, Ligat." 

The blasters fire, beams of bloody crimson magic incinerating what was left of Ligat, turning his body to dust, his dust to ash, and the ash to a single glassy spot on the floor. 

There's a whimper from behind Sans, and he turns. The crowd is still there, huddled in the corner like frightened animals. Sans smiles wider. 

"Don't be afraid. I did this for you. All of it." 

They don't seem convinced, and they keep to the corner. Sans mentally shrugs and shortcuts to the Barrier, not caring that everyone will see it.  _ Let them see. Let them see what I can do. _

The Barrier is as he remembers it, impassable, incomprehensible, and impossible to look at fully. He puts one hand on its surface, feeling it hum through his phalanges.

He doesn't have enough power to break it, not yet, but he will. As he shortcuts back to the city, he knows one thing for certain: he's going to get them all out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? A lot of stuff happened. Sans injected DETERMINATION and killed Ligat. God, I hate needles. Also, bonus points for the person who guesses the next chapter title. Also also, I wanna know what you think happens next, what you liked/disliked about this chapter so I can mke the next ones better, and any ideas you have about this. I'm approaching the point where I am between ideas- which is to say that I know how it ends, but not necessarily how we get there. I think that's it, so have a nice (rest of the) day!


	8. King of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are fine. Well, no, they're not fine yet, but they will be soon. Sans will make sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo... long time no see? I said I thought I would be able to actually finish this one, and then I left it un-updated for about ten months. Go me! I'm not really in this fandom anymore, and to be honest I wasn't really expecting to ever continue writing it, but a few days ago I got a really nice comment and I decided to keep going. This raises two points: One, comments really do matter. Seriously, I love them, and it can actually keep us going. I'm not saying this so you'll comment on mine (though please do), but so you'll comment on other people's. There's some wonderful stuff out there that deserves all the praise, so remember to kudos and comment and make someone's day. Two, most of this section is written over a year after I started writing it and like eleven months after I stopped, so... I'm not sure how well it ended up meshing, or how well it's written. So, apologies if it didn't work too well, or if it's rushed. I'm not sure of my commitment going forward either, since it's neither the ending I had planned nor a great ending in and of itself, but at the very least it's better than it has been. 
> 
> Sorry for the long author's note and longer wait, and thanks so much for reading.

People are afraid of him now. He can sense the crackle of tension in the air when he enters a room, something he has never inspired in his life, in any iteration of his existence. Monsters who he's become familiar with, become friendly with, snap to attention when they see him passing by. Whispered conversations with the words  _ Judge, Jury, and Executioner  _ buried in them die off with a single glance, faces paling in fright. They've seen what he can do, what he  _ will _ do, and they're frightened by what they've found.

But this is why they elected him, right? Because he was powerful, because he could make the hard decisions. Like with the famine, like with the plague, like with Ligat.

Like with the human.

He had shied away from those tough calls in other timelines, of course. He had stuck to the script the human had written, until they decided this time to just tear it up and leave him with nothing. Well, he's in charge here, and nothing will stop him from saving everyone. 

At least, everyone who's left. 

The famine and the plague had cleared through scores and scores of people, leaving only the weak and frail and dead. In a sense, the disease and the loss of crops cancelled out; the amount of food was still sufficient for the number of people, it was just that both had dramatically decreased. There were precious few that had actually survived and survived well, but that just made them all the more precious. Monsters are so easily killed, so easily reduced to barely anything at all that those who weren't were a downright miracle. 

They need to be protected.

It seems like it should be so simple to keep them safe. There's magma running in Sans' marrow, electricity encircling his soul, and there's a thrumming in his core that runs in time with the universe- so why do they keep slipping away? They slip away from his gaze, from his smile, from his promises of a brighter future. They slip through his fingers like shedding fur, like bone shards, like dust. Sometimes- only sometimes, when the pressure in his soul and the heat in his bones feel like too much- he feels like it's everything that's slipping- time, space, himself. Except he can't be slipping, not really, because he understands more now than he ever did. 

He's going to figure out the Barrier, how to break it down to nothingness so they can all be free. He's going to figure out how to deal with the humans above so that the monsters are safe, unharmed, and alive. And then he's going to find the one human who did this and make them fix it, fix everything so that it's as it should be. 

He will. 

There has to be a way. There's always a way, even when there wasn't, even when he spent years trying to find it and failing. He's a better monster now, smarter and more powerful. He can find a way. It doesn't matter that he hasn't found anything yet, not an inch of give to the wall of light, not a single lead in any of the castle's texts, not a single spark of inspiration. 

It's only a matter of time, however much time is beginning to feel like nothing more than an illusion.

And then, it happens.

* * *

 

"My King." 

The voice is a trembling one, wavering over just the two words, yet there's something in them that stands firm, resolute. Sans turns from the Barrier, from the sharp pins and needles that run through him at the very contemplation of it, to see a young rabbit-monster in Royal Guard armor, flanked by three others in similar gear. There's something between them, something he can't quite see with the first monster in the way. 

"Yes?"

The question makes the monsters flinch, though Sans is sure his tone had been mild. The leader is first among them to recover, looking him dead in the eye in a way that nobody has in a long time. She seems familiar, somehow, but he can't quite tell why. It doesn't matter, really, and it matters even less when she speaks.

"We've captured a human, sir."

A  _ human _ .

For a moment, a split second, everything stops. The lightning choir that fills his being falls silent for the first time since the Labs, only to strike up a new, higher chord once the information registers. His soul flickers like an overexcited forest fire in his chest, blazing up his vertebrae and licking along his ribs. For the first time in a long time, his smile feels genuine stretching across his face, almost manic in its joy.

_ This is it. _

The rabbit-monster steps aside to allow him to see the human, and once again it is a child. For a flash, he sees the  _ other _ one standing in the flesh and skin before him, a mocking smile across their face, before reality returns and it is just a child again. A child in a torn yellow shirt that is just a touch overlarge on its body and hangs past the waistline of khaki shorts. A child who has undone laces on blue tennis shoes, who has bandaids the litter across its hand and the bridge of its nose. A child with a soul that shines through its chest, a bright, deep, shimmering green.

The soul is some revolting, intoxicating shade of beautiful, and it's going to save them all. 

"You've done well. You've done very, very, well." Sans can't help the excitement that leaks into his voice, giddy almost to the point of hysteria. The guards puff up with pride, though there's still the slightest hint of unsureness in their expression. The child merely curls away from him as much as it can, whimpering slightly. It doesn't look like something capable of mass murder to the point of genocide, but there's the potential there that comes with containing sheer power inside oneself. 

It's that kind of power that Sans needs. 

"Guards, leave me." He can't have them here for this, not for this. This is going to be something sacred, the dawn of a new era, and he can't do this with people watching. Besides, it could be dangerous, and he needs to keep them safe. They don't seem to understand, though, not like he does.

"Sir? I-I don't think- I mean, it could be-" the guard leader stutters out, confused and afraid, her long ears flattened to her head. 

"I didn't ask for your opinion, uh," Sans pauses a moment, searching for a name and coming up blank. "What's your name again?"

"Harriet, sir." She looks hurt, almost, under the still-overwhelming fright, but he remembers her now. Harriet, the child who had discovered the first of the dust-rot, with the purple eyes. She doesn't look like he remembered, though. She looks years older, thin and rough-looking, a far cry from the child she had been.

But it can't have been that long since the famine and plague, really. He can't quite remember exactly how long it's been, what with time blurring and stretching before him, but it can't have been to the point of years. No. If nothing else, the human would have gotten bored and reset by now; he must just be misremembering about Harriet. The circumstances had been far too hard on her, on all of them. It must have aged her beyond her years, but that's alright; it's all going to be better now.

"Harriet, then. You've done well, but it's time to leave the kid to me. I'll take care of it. You're dismissed."

She hesitates, then nods once, tightly. With a wave of her hand, the other guards drop the human abruptly onto the rough ground, the kid collapsing to its knees on impact. Another gesture and the small troupe turns and leaves, not once glancing back. As the tromp of their metal-booted footsteps fade, it's just him and the kid.

"Are you going to kill me?" The kid's voice is quiet, wavering. Afraid. It's afraid of him. Sans supposes that's only natural, given that the books from the Surface seem to depict the Grim Reaper as a skeleton; to the child here, it must be like being faced with death incarnate.

Sans knows a bit about what that feels like. Death just looks more like the kid in front of him than himself.

"Well, I guess it depends, really." The child looks up at that, expression almost faintly hopeful. It can't seem to hold his gaze, though, flicking its eyes away after only a second of eye contact. Sans' lack of actual eyes must be disturbing for it.

"What does it depend on?" It's a question fuelled with desperation, the despairing hope of it burning out most of the wobble in its voice. It's looking up at him from the ground, having made no move to stand, and for a moment, Sans feels almost god-like. No, almost human. "Because I can be good, I promise! If you need me to scrub the floors, or- or shine your shoes or something, I can do that! Just please don't kill me!" 

"No, it doesn't depend on anything like that," Sans replies, stepping closer to the cowering child and letting his eyelights blink out. "It just depends on your definition of death."

The kid starts to scream, high and clear, ringing out against the Barrier like a bell. It moves to punch him, surging up from its knees, but Sans has faced far worse with more mercy, and within moments the kid is on its back, trapped under the weight of blue magic. The kid writhes in its place, and it doesn't stop screaming, not as Sans places a hand its chest, and not as Sans reaches with his magic, wrapping the soul in blue threads that constrict as they loop around and around again. Sans tugs slightly on the magic, and the kid shrieks as its soul moves fractionally within it.

"Please," it manages between heaving, sobbing gasps. "Don't."

"You're helping a good cause, kid. You should be proud."

"You don't have to do this." It's begging, the way the other human never would have. It's not putting up a fight, not like the other kid would have. Sans is almost disappointed. "We can find another way."

"You don't understand, bucko. I  _ do _ have to. I have to save them." Sans leans in close to the kid's fleshy, tear-stained face and grins. "Even better, now I  _ can _ ."

With that, Sans yanks hard on the blue threads, ripping the soul through layers of bone and flesh, pulling out an ear-splitting, piercing scream as well. The child jerks against the magical bonds like a seizure, eyes rolling back and blood running from its nose like a crimson flood. The glow of the soul shines through the thin layer of the kid's skin and shirt, and Sans is so close. 

One strong twist and the soul pulls free from the body to hover above it, casting a green glow in all directions. Everything falls quiet and still, the thrashing and wailing ceasing abruptly, leaving less than an echo to fill the silence. Sans pulls the soul towards him, in all its incomprehensibility, and he can't believe it.

He's done it.

He can save them.

It's done. 

The soul glows faintly in his hands, the light of it streaming through the gaps in between the bone. It's a beautiful, mesmerizing thing, pulsing with self-contained energy to a beat outside of conscious understanding. Sans can't take his eyes off it. Slowly, as though time has been pulled to taffy, he lifts it to his ribcage, where his own soul lies. For a moment, there is only the space between the two souls, the feeling of a phantom heat shared between them. Then, without a sound, the two click together like magnets, except they don't stop at the surface skin, but flow together like water and oil. 

The sensation that comes with it is indescribable. There's the feeling of supernovae, of a black hole, of all the empty space and all the pockets of matter. Galaxies collide, stars burn out, and planets spin at sickening speeds. Through it all, there's the thread of crackling energy, electrifying. There's the ringing of broken eardrums and the sunrise of light hidden by eyelids. There's the feeling of every molecule and the drugged numbness of entropy. There is everything, and there is nothing, and it's impossible to tell the two apart. 

It's all so incomprehensible, and yet, there's something so personal about it all. In the ringing, there's the sound of a birthday party, of kids playing. There's the snap of a broken bone. There's a small voice full of wonder that brings with it a warmth even now. In the molecules and numbness, there's a dirt field, there's cool water, there's a soft bed. In the darkened light, there are glowing flowers that lean close. There are faces, flickering by so quickly as to be unrecognizable. There's a joyous smile, and it's in that smile that everything seems to stop, before everything seems to shatter.

* * *

 

When Sans wakes up, he's lying on the ground. His bones ache, but they thrum in a way he can only compare to having a pulse. He feels shaken and unsure, like a bird just out of the egg, but also like he has an iron core. The soul- souls?- soul hybrid sits in his chest like a helium weight. It  _ is  _ still Sans, isn't it? He isn't the child, is he? 

As he makes to stand, he realizes that he had become entwined with the child's- Jason's, the kid's name was apparently Jason- body while he had been overwhelmed by absorbing the soul. He extricates himself as best he can, lifting himself from the embrace of the dead. There was a sort of strange comfort in the hold, and as he stands, something feels a bit hollow inside. From above, the kid looks so small, so innocent. It almost looks like a deep sleep except for the pallor that has already begun to creep up the kid's skin and the stiffness that has already begun to sink into his bones. 

For a second, a flash of deep, unfathomable grief runs through Sans, emanating from the depths of his hybrid soul. Then it's gone, quashed in an instant. Sans turns, and, without looking back, walks back towards the city, leaving behind the child pale as death.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so. Um. Hi! First work in Undertale, and so far the first multi-chapter I actually think I can finish. I've got a fair amount done, and I was planning on waiting until I was totally finished, but I was beginning to slow down on the writing, so I was hoping posting the first chapter would give some motivation. I have plans for the ending and parts I haven't written, but I'm kinda afraid of it getting too dark for you guys (not for me, but that's because my perception of my own writing is a bit screwy. "Oh, he just killed a guy extremely graphically. Eh. Not that bad. General Audiences.") I don't wanna be spoilery, but I don't wanna go in a bad direction for this, so my tumblr is celestialfeathers if you wanna ask me. Or just talk! If there's anything triggery I haven't tagged (though I mean genocide is a pretty good starting point, I think), let me know and I'll tag it. Don't want anyone having a b a d t i m e, do we? (I'm so sorry for that.) Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. Hope you like(d) it, comments and kudos are super appreciated! Have a good day (or rest of the night, depending).


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